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Friday, March 15, 2013

Box Break - - 2008-09 Be A Player Blaster

You know when you are in your local {enter retailer name here} and you happen to walk by the "card aisle", or "wall", or "4' Gondola" and you get the feeling of adrenaline rushing through your veins? I haven't had the feeling in quite a while because I have made it a point to not go over to those areas. They have been a bane to my collecting existence for a long time and caused much heartache (walletache).

Well the other day, I happened to find myself face to face with the trading card aisle and really had no idea how I got there. But when in Rome, right? I proceeded to look over the wares, to which I found very little that peaked much interest. That was until I found the shelf-o-blasters that lurked at the end of the aisle. These were no ordinary blasters with the traditional $19.99 price tag. No these were the "discounted" ones with the $5.99-$11.99 tags...my personal favorite.

Strangely enough (that was sarcasm), there wasn't much by way of hockey. A couple of last years Score, a box of 2009-10 Upper Deck Series I, and a 2007-08 OPC box that looked as if it had been returned by a Pit Bull. But on the bottom shelf, behind some weird Pete Rose cards, there was this...

It's not often that you find BAP cards in a retail store so for $10 I figured why not. You can see there are 2 packs, 5 cards per pack with 1 guaranteed autograph (that comes out to $1 per card for the math challenged). Since there are only 10 cards here. I figured I'd show them all since I'm sure there are many of you out there that have never seen this set before.

Here is the pack...looks just like the box except it is commanding me to "Grab Autograph Cards!" Ok, I will.

Here are the base cards that were pulled. I figured I would scan all of them since there really aren't that many. Nothing really fancy here in the design other than the team color coordinated, rasterized photo of the player in the background and the matching name stripe down the side. Simple and clean.

Which is technically two autographs, I guess. We have Matthew Lombardi and Dustin Boyd, both from the Calgary Flames at the time. Lombardi is now in his second stint with the Coyotes and Boyd has since played for the Predators, Canadiens, and now is in the KHL (last I looked). I'm not sure I understand how you get either of these two's names out of that chicken scratch mess but I suppose there are much worse examples out there.

Worth $10? Probably not, but getting an auto in a blaster is always fun and dual auto cards are even better. There are also triple autos available out there too if anyone was interested. The best deal on these is if you can get to a show where some dealers usually have these available for about $7-$8.

OK, I thought I might have jumped the gun on this one so I did some research. The other contending duo would be Willie Mitchell and Alex Edler. But both of those guys are at least technically in the NHL and Willie has a Cup where Boyd is long removed from the NHL. However, in all fairness at the time Boyd was a pretty decent prospect who just didn't pan out and is enjoying the high life in the KHL.